Confederate Military History. Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry

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      We are now prepared to consider the action of the South which rested upon the relation which the States and the Federal government bore to each other. What the South maintained was that the Union, or general government, emanated from the people of the several States, acting in their separate and sovereign capacity, as distinct political communities; that the Constitution being a compact to which each State was a party for the purpose of good government and the protection of life, liberty and property, the several States had the right to judge of infractions of the Constitution, or of the failure of the common government to subserve its covenanted ends, and to interpose by secession or otherwise for protecting the great residuary mass of undelegated powers, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them. The third Virginia resolution of 1798, drawn by Madison, puts this very clearly—‘That this assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare that it views the powers of the Federal government as resulting from the compact to which the States and parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in the compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the said compact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.’ The States, in adopting the Constitution and surrendering many attributes of sovereignty, might have surrendered all their powers and even their separate existence. Were they guilty of this felo de se, or did each retain the equal right to judge of the failure of the government to accomplish stipulated objects as well as of the mode and measure of redress, and the means of protecting its citizens? We have held that the obvious and chief purpose of the Constitution was to invest the Federal government with such powers only as equally affected the members of the community called the Union and to leave to the States all remaining powers. The greater part of the powers delegated to the general government relate directly or indirectly to two great divisions of authority; the one pertaining to the foreign relations of the country, the other of an internal character; the purposes for which the Constitution was formed being power, security and respectability without, and peace, tranquility and harmony within. Mr. Calhoun, in early political life, stated clearly our dual system. The American Union is a democratic federal republic—a political system compounded of the separate governments of the several States and of one common government of all the States, called the government of the United States. The powers of each are sovereign, and neither derives its powers from the other. In their respective spheres neither is subordinate to the other, but co-ordinate; and, being co-ordinate, each has the right of protecting its own powers from the encroachments of the other, the two combined forming one entire and separate government The line of demarcation between the delegated powers to the Federal government and the powers reserved to the States is plain, inasmuch as all the powers delegated to the general government are expressly laid down, and those not delegated are reserved to the States unless specially prohibited.

      Much is said and written in praise of the British constitution, but, in large degree, it is intangible and indefinable. It exists in no exact form, except as contained in Magna Charta, Petition of Right and some other muniments of liberty. Elsewhere it is to be searched for in usage, tradition, precedent and public opinion, and chiefly consists in direct parliamentary control of the responsible heads of the great departments of state. Knowing how illusory and deceptive were constitutional guarantees, which existed only in repeatable statutes or the varying will of parliament, our ancestors preferred to repose on fixed definitions and asserted rights, embodied in organic law, having more dignity, permanence and sacredness than a mere municipal or statutory regulation. In proportion as power was liable to be abused, it was thought wise to impose and strengthen checks and restraints. If the judgment of the governing body be the only limit to its powers, then there is nothing to control that judgment or to correct its errors. The minority is relegated to the uncertain remedy of rebellion or revolution. Restrictions, however clear and ascertainable, if there be no right or power to enforce, will end in legislative omnipotence which makes useless a written constitution. True liberty demands severe restraints to prevent degeneracy into license and needs a discipline to be compelled by some exterior authority. It is absurd to make one's rights contingent upon the conscience or reason of another. There is but one safe rule to be adopted by those entrusted with ecclesiastical or civil power—if you do not wish to hurt me, put it out of your power to do so. If a government, or a department of a government, can interpret finally its own powers, or take without hindrance what powers it pleases, then it may as well have had originally all powers, without the mockery of a verbal limitation. Mr. Jefferson deprecated ‘usurpation of the powers retained by the States, interpolations into the compact, and direct infractions of it,’ and as late as 1825, solemnly asserted that though a dissolution of the Union would be a great calamity, submission to a government of unlimited powers would be a greater. Under our written Constitution, the powers of the government were distributed among several co-ordinate departments and instead of being left to be scrambled for were defined with such precision that generally each may ascertain its own, unless blinded by ambition or partisanship or selfishness. The jurisdiction of each is limited to certain enumerated objects, and this division, with checks and balances, was to prevent the evils Jefferson deplored, and which have always attended irresponsible and ill-defined authority.

      As the written Constitution, with all its superiority to unwritten usage, is not self-executory, the practical and vital question continually arises, who is to guard and enforce its limitations and who is the ultimate arbiter in case of dangerous infractions? The famous Kentucky resolutions of 1798, drawn by Jefferson, affirm that the States composing the Union are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; that each State, while delegating certain definite powers to that government, reserved the residuary mass of right to their own self-government, and that the government created by the compact to which each State acceded as a State and is an integral party, was not made СКАЧАТЬ